On Jan. 24, 2003, a new law enforcement and investigatory agency whose duties include functions taken from as many as 22 other federal agencies came into existence. The reorganization of these operations reportedly marks the biggest government bureaucratic shake-up since the creation of the Department of Defense half a century ago.
Even before the new Department of Homeland Security opened its doors, controversies arose over not just how it would operate and exercise its powers, but what level of access to information it would allow, and how it would respond to news media requests. Will new exemptions be carved out of the FOI Act, either by law or by practice? Will officials and agents feel free to tap phones of journalists, or subpoena their records during investigations? Will the new director consider procedural safeguards, like those adopted years ago by the Department of Justice, to ensure that freedom of the press will not be denied? And will those practices be followed?

But "homeland" security is not the only concern for journalists covering anti-terrorism initiatives; military actions abroad often present a greater challenge, as questions over disclosure of information, access to troops, and restraints on reporting seem to resurface anew with each conflict.

Questions and issues like these led the Reporters Committee to launch this "weblog," so that there will be a centralized site on the Internet for journalists who want to follow these issues and pass along information they learn while covering — or worse, being covered by — the new department and other anti-terrorism actions. Please submit comments and pass along tips to make this project as useful, thorough and up-to-date as possible.

A few words about what this project will not do. We do not intend to cover many of the issues that will undoubtedly come up as the Department takes shape, even if those issues are the ones generating headlines. We will cover information access and free press issues, but will not follow debates over many civil liberties issues that, while important, are outside of our domain.

Funding for the launch of this site was provided by The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.

Feb. 28, 2006

JUDICIARY COMMITTEE REVIEWS SPECTER\'S SURVEILLANCE BILL. The Senate Judiciary Committee today considered Arlen Specter's draft bill that would require the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court to oversee the administration's warrantless surveillance program, The Boston Globe reported. Though the bill has not been released to the public, specialists told the Globe that it avoids declaring whether the program has been illegal while reestablishing congressional authority over the program. Critics claim that this compromise allows Specter to accommodate Bush without requiring presidents to obey the law. — Posted at 6:29 pm

SENATE TO VOTE ON PATRIOT ACT. The Senate voted 69-30 today to put the USA Patriot Act renewal up for a vote, and the Senate could pass the bill as early as tomorrow, The Washington Post reported. But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the bill's chief author, indicated he is displeased with the bill's privacy protections and plans further legislation and hearings to restore curbs on government power rejected by the House, the story says. — Posted at 6:28 pm

CIA NOTES SHOW LIBBY KNEW OF PLAME. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby knew the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame well before her cover was blown, according to handwritten notes by CIA agents that appear "to be the first known document in the hands of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald" that contradict Libby's claim that he learned Plame's identity from reporters in July 2003, according to the New York Daily News. Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice by Fitzgerald. In one of Fitzgerald's recently unsealed briefs, Fitzgerald wrote that a CIA agent has "handwritten notes indicting that Libby referred to 'Joe Wilson' and 'Valerie Wilson' by those names in conversations with the briefer on June, 14, 2003," according to the Daily News. — Posted at 6:26 pm

COAST GUARD CAN\'T SAY DUBAI COMPANY WOULDN\'T USE ASSETS FOR TERROR. The Dubai company assuming ownership of operations at six major U.S. ports would pose no national security threat, according to a preliminary review by the White House, but the U.S. Coast Guard says it couldn't rule out the possibility of Dubai Ports World using company assets for terrorist operations, The Washington Post reported. Coast Guard officials raised this possibility in December, according to a previously undisclosed document, citing broad "intelligence gaps" preventing them from assessing the risks, The New York Times reported. — Posted at 6:24 pm

TIMES FILES FOIA SUIT IN EAVESDROPPING CASE. The New York Times has sued the Department of Defense for release of memos, meeting logs and e-mail messages related to the department's controversial eavesdropping program. The suit alleges that the Pentagon failed to respond to the Times' Dec. 16 request for the records under the Freedom of Information Act. — Posted at 6:23 pm

HOPE FOR CARROLL. The Sunday deadline set by the captors of reporter Jill Carroll came and went with no definitive news on her situation, The Christian Science Monitor reports. But Iraq's interior minister, in conversations with the U.S. ambassador and in an interview with ABC television, says he thinks Ms. Carroll is alive and will be recovered safely, the Monitor reported. — Posted at 6:20 pm

Feb. 27, 2006

AFGHAN PRISON REPLACING GUANTANAMO? Critics note that, while the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo has sparked international fury, the military's less-visible detention site in Bagram has quietly expanded and holds hundreds of terror suspects "in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges," The New York Times reported yesterday. Military officials told the Times that, unlike those at Guantanamo, the Afghan detainees have no access to lawyers, no right to hear the allegations against them and only rudimentary reviews of their status as 'enemy combatants.' — Posted at 6:42 pm

SPECTER WANTS FISA TO SUPERVISE NSA SURVEILLANCE. A draft bill authored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) would require the federal government to obtain permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court to maintain its secret spy program, which is currently conducted without warrants, The Washington Post reported yesterday. The administration supports an alternative proposal that would exempt the National Security Agency program from the surveillance law. — Posted at 5:28 pm

EMBEDDED FREELANCER HELD AFTER INTERVIEW. Embedded freelance journalist David Axe has been to Iraq six times -- five times embedded with U.S. or British forces. He's been bombed and shot at, but the latest incident he encountered "was plain scary," he writes in Editor & Publisher. He spent 36 hours, most under armed guard, detained by the U.S. military who were interested in the fact that he knew "classified information" given to him in an on-the-record interview with an Army 1st lieutenant. The Army claimed that Axe was endangering U.S. troops with the information. — Posted at 4:42 pm

APRIL DEADLINE FOR MEDIA SUBPOENAS The stage was set on Friday for a possible showdown between journalists and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby as U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton set an April 7 deadline "for recipients of the subpoenas to respond whether they intended to comply with them," according to the Los Angeles Times. Libby's lawyers said the soon plan to subpoena "reporters and news organizations" with regards to their recollection of conversations they had with Libby. Libby has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice in regard to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. — Posted at 4:28 pm

NO JOY FOR TRAIN STATION PHOTOGRAPHER. Preety Gadhoke, a Johns Hopkins University grad student, was shooting photos of a MARC commuter rail station in Maryland earlier this month when she was briefly detained by transit system police, The Washington Post reported. Gadhoke, whose film was confiscated but later returned, was taking the photos for a "Joy of Photography" course at the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program. — Posted at 3:37 pm

Feb. 25, 2006

PENTAGON MUST RELEASE IDENTITIES OF GITMO DETAINEES. In what would be the most comprehensive list yet of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a federal judge ordered the Department of Defense to release identities of hundreds of detainees held in the U.S. military base. The ordered release of uncensored transcripts of the detainee hearings is in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by The Associated Press against the government. About 490 prisoners are being held in the facility; most without charges, the AP reported. — Posted at 02:41 am

Feb. 24, 2006

A VICTIM OF TELLING THE TRUTH. Recently released memos and e-mails sent by Federal Bureau of Investigation interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, show some officials repeatedly expressed concern to senior military officials that aggressive techniques employed by the military with detainees were less effective than other, less-aggressive FBI methods, and were possibly illegal. The documents were released to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government. The documents also show that FBI officials declined to investigate abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in January 2004, after it had learned there was photographic evidence of abuse, The Washington Post reported. — Posted at 3:44 pm

NATIONAL ARCHIVES TO EXAMINE ITS \"RECLASSIFICATION\" SCHEME. An office within the National Archivies and Records Administration will audit the agency's recent seven-year project to reclassify thousands of previously declassified documents. The Information Security Oversight Office will review the authorization and justification for withdrawing the documents from the public as well as the appropriateness of the reclassification. Federal agencies contend the reclassified records were improperly declassified to begin with and have remained classified all along. — Posted at 3:42 pm

LIBBY CONTENDS FITZGERALD IMPROPERLY APPOINTED. Lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, argued yesterday that the perjury and obstruction of justice charges brought against Libby should be dropped because special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald had been improperly appointed, according to the Washington Post. Fitzgerald, who was assigned to investigate the leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, explained in recently unsealed affadavit that he had suspected Libby had lied to investigators becuase "Libby's account of conversations has been largely inconsisten with every other material witness to date," according to the Post. — Posted at 3:41 pm

FBI MEMO SHOWS GOVERNMENT APPROVAL OF ABUSIVE TECHNIQUES AT GUANTANAMO. Defense Department officials encouraged interrogators to "use aggressive interrogation tactics" with prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay, despite the Federal Bureau of Investigation's classification of those techniques as "of questionable effectiveness," according to documents released by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU received the documents as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government. An FBI e-mail included in the documents states that "hooding prisoners, threats of violence, and techniques meant to humiliate detainees" were "approved at high levels w/in DoD." — Posted at 3:39 pm

A VICTIM OF TELLING THE TRUTH. Three journalists for Al-Arabiya television, including the well-known female correspondent Atwar Bahjat, were kidnapped and killed Wednesday while covering violence in Samarra, where a Shiite mosque was bombed. Bahjat, whose father is Sunni and whose mother is a Shia Muslim, "is a victim of telling the truth," Al-Arabiya's Baghdad correspondent Ahmed al-Saleh said. — Posted at 3:38 pm

KEEPING UP WITH THE ENEMY. When in comes to communicating during a time of war, the United States is not keeping up with its enemies, Defense Secrectary Donald Rumsfeld writes in today's Los Angeles Times. Rumsfeld writes about the U.S. military command working with the Iraqi government and U.S. Embassy on "nontraditional means to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people." Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate: for example, the allegations of "buying news." The resulting explosion of critical media stories then causes all activity, all initiative, to stop. Even worse, it leads to a "chilling effect" among those who are asked to serve in the military public affairs field. — Posted at 3:36 pm

DID THE NEW YORK TIMES VIOLATE THE ESPIONAGE ACT? An article in March's Commentary Magazine argues that the editors and writers of <I>The New York Times violated the Espionage Act by publishing, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," its story on the administration's secret spying program. The article, by Gabriel Schoenfeld, claims what "the New York Times has done is nothing less than to compromise the centerpiece of our defensive efforts in the war on terrorism." — Posted at 3:35 pm

SECRET REPORT DISCUSSES ATTACKS ON NUCLEAR PLANTS. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's secret defense plan for the nation's nuclear power plants anticipates that an attack would come from less than half the number of hijackers from the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and does not require defense weapons such as rocket propelled granades to protect the plants, The Associated Press reported. In a letter to the commission, independent watchdog group the Project On Government Oversight criticized the commission's decision not to protect against RPGs. — Posted at 3:33 pm

LIBBY \"PREOCCUPIED WITH MORE SERIOUS MATTERS.\" Lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, say they need "classified daily briefings prepared for President Bush" to show that Libby, who has been charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, did not intentionally lie to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, according to the Washington Post. Instead, Libby's lawyers plan to argue that Libby was "preoccupied with more serious matters" when questioned by Fitzgerald regarding the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, according to the Post. — Posted at 3:30 pm

Feb. 23, 2006

ADMINISTRATION VETOED NSA BRIEFING WITH HOUSE INTEL COMMITTEE. Soon after President Geroge W. Bush confirmed the existence of the National Security Agency spy program last December, deputy U.S. intelligence chief, Air Force General Michael Hayden, "was prepared to brief the full [House intelligence] committee but our request was disapproved by White House Chief of Staff Andy Card," Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) told Reuters yesterday. — Posted at 10:38 pm

HIGH COURT MAY HEAR CASE ABOUT MILITARY TRIALS FOR TERRORISTS. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's request to dismiss a case challenging the legality of military trials for terrorism suspects, deciding to consider whether they have authority to hear such cases at the same time that they hear oral arguments about the constitutionality of "military commission" trials on March 28, The Washington Post reported. — Posted at 10:36 pm

HE CLASSIFIES, HE DECLASSIFIES; CHENEY\'S POWERS ABOUND. Executive Order 13292, vaguely referenced by Vice President Dick Cheney in an interview last week, essentially gives him the power of the president in dealing with classified materials. The order, issued by President Bush in March 2003, modifies a 1995 President Clinton executive order that limited classification powers to the president. — Posted at 10:35 pm

TAPES OF SADDAM HUSSEIN DISCUSSING WMDS MAY GO PUBLIC. The Bush administration is considering making public tapes from the early 1990s of Saddam Hussein discussing weapons of mass destruction in order to allow translation and review by journalists and academics, according to an aide to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.). The tapes, part of 35,000 boxes of material on Iraq's weapons programs, were recently released by former U.N. weapons inspector Bill Tierney to a nongovermental meeting called the Intelligence Summit 2006. Tierney said he provided the tapes because it is wrong for the government to keep them from the public. — Posted at 10:33 pm

MISSOURI TRUCKING SCHOOL SUSPICIOUS OF LARGE NUMBER OF MIDDLE EASTERN EXAMINEES. Over a period of 18 months, 60 percent of commercial driver's license tests administered at a western Missouri trucking school were taken by men with names likely of Middle Eastern origin, raising concern with the school's operator in a county where the population is more than 95 percent white, The Associated Press reported. The FBI is investigating the school and has taken records of people who took commercial driver's license tests. — Posted at 10:32 pm

NAVY COUNSEL WARNED OF POTENTIAL FOR DETAINEE TORTURE. Two years before the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora advised officials that international agreements on torture and treatment of detainees would invite abuse, The Associated Press reported. In an interview with the New Yorker, Mora said he thought a special Pentagon group was addressing his concerns, but found out otherwise. "I was appalled by the whole thing. It was clearly abusive and it was clearly contrary to everything we were ever taught about American values." — Posted at 10:31 pm

U.S. PULLS THOUSANDS OF PREVIOUSLY AVAILABLE DOCUMENTS. Thousands of historical documents that were available for years - some even published by the State Department - were "reclassified" in a secret seven-year review of documents at the National Archives. In 1999, the Archives began reviewing the more than 55,000 documents that had been ordered declassified by President Bill Clinton in 1995; restoring their status to "classfied" accelerated when the Bush administration took office and especially after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, The New York Times reported. — Posted at 10:29 pm

WHITE HOUSE WANTS TO PROTECT CIVIL LIBERTIES IN THE WAR ON TERROR . . . SORT OF. More than a year after the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was created by the 9/11 Commission to ensure protection of those issues in the fight against terrorism, the board has a few members, but they have never met. The Senate Judiciary Committee recently approved two of the board members to lead the group, but the Los Angeles Times reports it may take months before "the board is up and running and doing much serious work." The board will report to President Bush. — Posted at 10:28 pm

FREE JILL CARROLL. Journalist Jill Carroll's family again called for her safe release as Reporters Without Borders launched a weeklong international campaign to free Carroll, kidnapped Jan. 7, and two Iraqi journalists, Rim Zeid and her colleague Marwan Khazaal. Carroll's kidnappers have said she will be killed on or after Feb. 26 - Sunday - unless all Iraqi women held by the U.S. military in Iraq are freed. The Christian Science Monitor , for which Carroll was reporting, has a Web slide show of worldwide appeals for the journalist's release. — Posted at 10:25 pm

Feb. 21, 2006

REVERSING COURSE. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the U.S. military's controversial program of paying Iraqi media outlets to run pro-American stories had ended. Tuesday, he reversed himself, saying that the Pentagon is reviewing the practice, The Associated Press reported. — Posted at 5:28 pm

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN. Farnaz Fassihi, an Iranian-American reporter for The Wall Street Journal writes about covering Baghdad, where newsgathering and living conditions deteriorated over three years. The goal was to be invisible, to not be noticed as a foreigner when stuck in traffic, behind a red light or whizzing through Baghdad streets. You just never knew who was sitting in the car next to you. Would they pull out a gun? Would they spot the car and chase you down the road? Would they drag you out? Who would sell you out? Would they have mercy on your Iraqi staff? — Posted at 5:27 pm

BLAME THE MEDIA. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says U.S. military and government agencies do not have a "strategic communications framework" for fighting terrorism and the absence of such a framework is partially the fault of the media, The Washington Post reported. He blamed the American media for ending recent U.S. military initiatives, such as paying to place articles in Iraqi newspapers, through an "explosion of critical press stories." — Posted at 5:20 pm

Feb. 20, 2006

BAR ASSOCIATION SAYS \"SBU\" ISN\'T ENOUGH TO WITHHOLD INFO. Declaring records to be "sensitive but unclassified" without outlining a policy to explain how records were classified as such is insufficient legal basis for withholding those records, the American Bar Association said last week in adopting a resolution on SBU policy. — Posted at 11:42 am

FEDERAL LAW BURIES PROVISION BARRING ACCESS TO VITAL RECORDS. Public access to birth and death certificates is cut off in most cases under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, preventing reporters, archivists, genealogists and the general public from tracking patterns of illness and from reporting on the historical record. States who choose not to meet the federal regulations - currently there are 14 open-records states - "will not be able to access any federal services, including Social Security and passports," said Vermont's public health chief. — Posted at 11:40 am

Feb. 17, 2006

INJURED ABC NEWS CO-ANCHOR, CAMERAMAN MAKING PROGRESS. ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman Doug Vogt, injured in a roadside blast in Iraq last month, "continue to make progress," according to the latest update from ABC News President David Westin, Broadcasting & Cable magazine reports. — Posted at 12:44 pm

LODI TRIAL BEGINS. The trial of Hamid Hayat, a Lodi, Cal., resident, began yesterday as prosecutors accused him of "supporting terrorism by attending a camp in Pakistan run by terrorists bend on jihad," according to The New York Times. Hayat's lawyer, however, told the story of Hayat traveling to Pakistan to seek medical care for his mother and who, while there, attended a religious school. The trial of Umer Hayat, Hamid's father, will begin next week. The trial have divided Lodi - a "small, tight-knit Muslim community" that "has been roiled by the charges and divided over whether the men are wrong accused or possibly the seeds of a terrorist cell," according to the Times. — Posted at 12:28 pm

TOUGHER LEAK LAWS SOUGHT. The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), said yesterday that he hopes to "criminalize the leaking of a wider range of classified information than is now covered by law," by adding the language to the 2007 intelligence authorization bill, according to the Washington Post. — Posted at 12:27 pm

FITZGERALD: LIBBY SEEKING TOO MUCH. According to court papers filed late yesterday, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald refused I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's request for additional evidence as "he is not required to give the defense the statements and testimony of reporters who will be called as government witnesses at trial," according to The New York Times . In addition, Fitzgerald said Libby is seeking access to "information that would threaten national security, grand jury secrecy and presidential executive privilege," according to the Times. Fitzgerald charged Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, with perjury and obstruction of justice for Libby's answers to questions regarding the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. — Posted at 11:35 am

Feb. 16, 2006

JUDGE ORDERS RELEASE OF EAVESDROPPING DOCUMENTS. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ordered the Department of Justice to release documents concerning the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which sued the department under the Freedom of Information Act. The judge gave the Justice Department 20 days to either release the documents or compile a list of which documents it is withholding. — Posted at 2:20 pm

DOJ INVESTIGATING ITS ROLE IN EAVESDROPPING PROGRAM. The Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility is looking into the department's role in approving the White House's warrantless wiretapping program. The investigation will include examining whether the program is permissible under existing law, an attorney for the office wrote. — Posted at 12:21 pm

CHENEY MUM ON DISCLOSURE QUESTION. During an interview yesterday with Fox News Channel, Vice President Dick Cheney "declined to say whether he authorized" the disclosure of classified information, according to the Washington Post . Cheney claimed a presidental executive order allows him to declassify information. "I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions," he said. — Posted at 12:13 pm

Feb. 15, 2006

TERROR WATCH LIST HAS 325,000 NAMES. A list of names of international terrorism suspects and aids has more than quadrupled since the fall of 2003, and accounting for aliases puts the estimated number of persons on the list kept by the National Counterterrorism Center to be around 200,000, The Washington Post reported. The list is put together from reports from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency, among others, and contains mostly "non-U.S. persons." — Posted at 4:54 pm

AFGHAN PRISONER ABUSE CASES LAGGING. More than a year after the Army began prosecuting 27 soldiers and officers responsible for abusing prisoners at a U.S. detention center in Afghanistan, only 15 have been prosecuted, with the stiffest punishment received being five months in a military prison, The New York Times reported. One problem prosecutors have faced in their attempts to hold soldiers accountable for breaking rules is that the rules were not clear, showing an uncertainty within the military about how terror suspects were to be treated after President Bush decided they would not be protected by the Geneva Conventions, the story says. — Posted at 4:51 pm

EU SEEKS ADMINISTRATION\'S SECRET PRISON INFO. A European Parliament committee is contacting senior CIA and administration officials to testify on the CIA's use of secret prisons in Europe, pursuant to a mandate to find out whether the U.S. has conducted abductions, extradordinary rendition, detention at secret sites or tortured prisoners in European countries, The Associated Press reported yesterday. — Posted at 4:51 pm

WHISTLEBLOWERS TELL CONGRESS THEY WERE RETALIATED AGAINST. In hearings on reforming federal whistleblower laws, five government whistleblowers testified about retaliatory actions they faced after calling attention to potential government wrongdoing. The House Government Reform Committee held the hearing on a measure that would provide better protection for these sorts of national-security whistleblowers. — Posted at 4:50 pm

NEW, MORE GRAPHIC PRISONER ABUSE PHOTOS SURFACE. Previously undisclosed photos depicting graphic mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison were broadcast on Australian television and reported to have been taken at about the same time as previously published photos, Australia's Special Broadcasting Service's "Dateline" program reported. The more recent images are more graphic than previously published photos, depicting what appears to be dead bodies, wounded people and prisoners performing sex acts, The Associated Press reported. — Posted at 4:46 pm

U.N. SAYS GUANTANAMO PRISONERS TORTURED. A United Nations report compiled by U.N. envoys who interviewed detainees' attorneys and former prisoners, but were denied access to prisoners, concludes that U.S. treatment of Guantanamo detainees violates human rights law and in some instances constitutes torture, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday. It urges the U.S. to close the prison, claiming that the administration's justifications for the detention distort international law, the story says. — Posted at 4:44 pm

A SMALL PRICE TO PAY. Princeton bioethics professor Peter Singer wonders why the U.S. isn't willing to negotiate with kidnappers for the release of Jill Carroll, the Christian Science Monitor freelancer who was abducted Jan. 7. Singer writes in today's Los Angeles Times : The kidnapper's demands, if indeed they are limited to the release of the five female prisoners being held by the military in Iraq, seem relatively modest, a small price to pay for saving the life of a young woman. As far as we know, none of these female prisoners is a significant insurgent leader or someone whose release would pose a major threat. What's more, the U.S. released five other women on Jan. 26 (although it was careful to say that the release had nothing to do with the kidnappers' demands). — Posted at 4:43 pm

FBI WANTS TO KNOW WHO GAVE CALIFORNIA REPORTERS SEALED COURT DOCUMENTS.. FBI agents have contacted three Sacramento Bee reporters in attempt to discover their sources for stories published on July 3 and July 8, 2005, which discussed the FBI's investigation into possible terrorist activity by Lodi, Cal. Muslims, according to the Bee. "The investigation is looking at how a sealed court document ended up with the newspaper," Karen Ernst, the FBI's Sacramento spokesperson told the Bee . In addition, jury selection began yesterday in the trial of Lodi residents Umer Hayat and his son Hamid Hayat on "terrorist-related charges," according to the Bee. Prosecutors allege, among other charges, that Hamid attended a terrorist training camp in late 2003 into 2004 and that Umer had "been to at least four camps as an observer," according to the Bee. — Posted at 4:41 pm

COURT REVIEWS RULING PROTECTING JOURNALISTS\' PHONE RECORDS. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (New York) is reviewing a lower court's decision that ruled "that the government could not get the telephone records of reporters from third parties such as telephone companies," according to Newsday. The original ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet would, if upheld, "set a precedent for every court in the county." The case arose after The New York Times asked the court to prevent the Department of Justice from obtaining phone records "showing calls between journalists Judith Miller and Philip Shenon and their sources following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks." — Posted at 4:40 pm

BILL WOULD MAKE UNDERGROUND PIPE LOCATIONS SECRET. Records of the locations of underground pipelines, meters and valves would be hidden from the public in Washington state if the state legislature enacts House Bill 2350. Opponents of the measure say it would prevent homebuyers and homeowners from knowing whether underground pipelines are located under or near their property - potentially impairing their abilities to make improvements on their property. — Posted at 4:39 pm

Feb. 14, 2006

JUSTICE SAYS IT CAN RELEASE WIRETAPPING DOCS. The legal memos relied upon by the Department of Justice in the National Security Agency's controversial wiretapping program could be released as soon as March 3, according to a report by the National Security Archives. The National Security Archives has joined with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit requesting legal justification for the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. — Posted at 6:02 pm

REPUBLICANS REACH AGREEMENT ON PATRIOT ACT. Republican senators reached an agreement with the White House last week, accepting revisions to the Act that will likely ensure the Act's passage in the Senate, The Washington Post reported. Renewal of the 2001 law, which was set to expire in December, was repeatedly postponed after Democrats and several Republicans banned together, refusing to pass it unless measures were added to provide greater civil liberties protections. Democrats criticize the compromise reached, saying it still lacks important civil liberties safeguards, and the Republican negotiators admit that they agreed to yield to the administration on several points, according to the story. — Posted at 6:00 pm

CONGRESS BRIEFED ON NSA SURVEILLANCE. Pressured by both parties during a closed-door briefing to the House intelligence committee Wednesday, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and National Security Administration director Michael V. Hayden expanded their briefing beyond the legal rationales for the administration's domestic surveillance program and gave additional procedural information about it, The Washington Post reported. Congress has pressed the White House for information about the program to assess its legality and provide needed oversight. Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said in a statement: "Today's briefing was a positive first step, and I appreciate the White House's willingness to inform more members on aspects of this vital NSA program. While the briefing did not, and could not, cover the full operational aspects of the program, it will allow for increased committee oversight going forward." — Posted at 5:58 pm

TAINTED FISA EVIDENCE OKAY, SOME SAY. News that Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court judges erected barriers to prevent the administration from using evidence gathered from its warrantless surveillance program to seek a domestic warrant invited an angry Wall Street Journal editorial Friday. The column asks, "why not? If a tip gathered from an email from Pakistan leads to suspicion about an American-based contact, what's wrong with using that news to get a legal warrant to track that suspect in the U.S.? It might even prevent a domestic attack. In any event, why is an unelected judge such as Ms. Kollar-Kotelly making these decisions?" — Posted at 5:56 pm

FISA COURT JUDGES WARNED OF TAINTED DATA. James A. Baker, a top Department of Justice lawyer, warned U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court, that information gathered from President Bush's warrantless spy program may have been improperly used to obtain warrants from the FISA Court, The Washington Post reported Thursday. Kotelly, who had serious doubts about the program's legality, had insisted that no such data be used to obtain warrants from her court and was infuriated by these revelations, according to the story. The spy program was temporarily suspended in 2004 when Kotelly complained to Justice that it rendered useless a screening process meant to keep tainted informaiton from the FISA Court after Baker alerted her to the problem. Although both Kotelly and her predecessor, Royce C. Lamberth, doubted the constitutionality of the spy program and took efforts to protect the integrity of the FISA Court, they believed they did not have authority to rule on the president's power to order the eavesdropping, the story says. — Posted at 5:45 pm

SPECTER WANTS FISA TO OVERSEE DOMESTIC SPYING. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is writing a bill that would give the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court power to oversee the administration's warrantless eavesdropping program, USA Today reports. Specter seeks to build bipartisan support for the bill to override a potential presidential veto, the story says. Under Specter's proposed legislation, the FISA Court would review the administration's surveillance every 45 days to ensure it does not exceed its authority. — Posted at 5:43 pm

LIBBY WAS ORDERED TO LEAK CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, claimed he was "authorized by his 'superiors' to disclose classified information to reporters about Iraq's weapons capability," in his testimony before a grand jury, according to a The New York Times report of a document filed by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald has charged Libby with perjury and obstruction of justice for Libby's answers to the grand jury during Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. The document released last week seems "to be a part of an effort by the prosecutor to demonstrate that Mr. Libby was engaged in using secret information to press the administration's case at the same time that [Plame's] identity was leaked to reporters." — Posted at 5:42 pm

ABDUCTED REPORTER: \'JUST DO WHATEVER THEY WANT.\' Kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll appeared calm in a video released last week and broadcast on Kuwaiti television station, Al Rai, and rebroadcast on U.S. networks. "I'm here, I'm fine. Please, just do whatever they want, give them whatever they want as quickly as possible. There is very short time; please do it fast. That's all." The video, the third of Carroll since she was kidnapped Jan. 7, sharply contrasts a video that aired Jan. 30 on Al-Jazeera showing Carroll sobbing. Carroll was working for The Christian Science Monitor , whose editor, Richard Bergenheim released a statement. — Posted at 5:40 pm

AIRLINE TERRORIST WATCH LIST PROGRAM MAY BE VULNERABLE TO HACKERS. Secure Flight, the program designed to check every domestic airline passengers' names against the government's terrorist watch lists, has been put on hold, undergoing an audit before it is further developed. The Government Accountability Office said that the Transportation Security Agency "may not have proper controls in place to protect sensitive information," although the TSA did not say whether it had discovered any security breaches. — Posted at 5:36 pm

HOUSE INTEL COMMITTEE GETS BRIEFED ON SECRET EAVESDROPPING PROGRAM. In a closed-door meeting last week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the deputy director of national intelligence described to the House Intelligence Committee how the secret eavesdropping program operates as well as discussing its legal justification, The New York Times reported. The two were scheduled to give a similar briefing to the Senate Intelligence Committee as well. — Posted at 5:34 pm

LIMITED WIRETAPPING DISCLOSURE MAY NOT HAVE BEEN ENOUGH. While Congressional leadership including the party leaders, chairmen and ranking members of the intelligence committees were kept informed of the National Security Agency's wiretapping program, informing this so-called "Gang of Eight" may not have been enough under the law, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. If the surveillance is considered an "intelligence collection program," only informing the "Gang of Eight" would "appear to be inconsistent with the law, which requires that the 'congressional intelligence committees be kept fully and currently informed of all intelligence activities," CNN reported. — Posted at 5:28 pm

Feb. 7, 2006

GONZALES\' TESTIMONY LEAVES UNANSWERED QUESTIONS. Under sharp questioning from both sides on the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales generally made the same legal arguments defending the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program that the administration has been making publicly over the past few weeks, several stories reported. Gonzales evaded questions about why the administration failed to ask Congress or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court about the program's legality and refused to answer others, such as identifying the number of NSA wiretaps initiated over the past four years and what happens to information collected in cases that do not end up being connected to terrorism, repeatedly saying he could not provide "operational details" about the program, the stories said. "Our enemy is listening," Gonzales explained during testimony, The Washington Times reported. "I cannot help but wonder if they aren't shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror." — Posted at 6:54 pm

VACATIONING IN THE MIDDLE EAST? YOU MAY OR MAY NOT BE EAVESDROPPED UPON. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request to find out whether the National Security Agency was keeping tabs on communications he made to the Middle East, retired teacher Richard Fisher was only told that the NSA would neither confirm nor deny that they intercepted any of his calls or e-mails. Fisher, from Hinsdale, Ill., had requested these records after a recent trip to that part of the world, curious as to whether he was a target of the Bush administration's wiretapping program, Time magazine reported. — Posted at 6:41 pm

ADMINISTRATION WANTED PLAME OUTED. According to former TIME magazine reporter John Dickinson, two "senior" administration officials told him to ask the CIA who sent ambassador Joe Wilson to Africa because they "knew exactly the answer I'd find." The person turned out to be Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, according to an article by Dickison on Slate . "Yet they were really careful not to let the information slip, which suggested that they knew at the time Plame's identity was radioactive," Dickinson wrote. The outing of Plame as a CIA agent led to the special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak and has, so far, netting indictments on I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former chief-of-staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, for perjury and obstruction of justice. — Posted at 6:39 pm

MOUSSAOUI JURY SELECTION PARTIALLY CLOSED. U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema closed the public and most of the press out of the first phase of jury selection in Moussaoui's death penalty trial yesterday, letting only a few pool reporters attend and then describe the proceedings to the other media, The Washington Post reported. — Posted at 4:54 pm

Feb. 6, 2006

PEACEFUL PROTESTORS\' FILES REQUESTED. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed multiple requests under the Freedom of Information Act for Pentagon documents on anti-war protesters, hoping to determine who is being watched and why. The ACLU's requests were on behalf of several peaceful protest organizations who have learned that they are listed in a Pentagon database listing potentially threatening groups. — Posted at 6:45 pm

OPEN SESSION, CLOSED MOUTH. Responding to questions about the number of communications tracked by the National Security Agency in the past year, and specifically the number of al-Qaida agents whose communications were intercepted, John Negroponte, the ambassador to the United Nations, told the Senate Intelligence Committee Feb. 2 that he could not discuss that information in an open hearing. — Posted at 6:44 pm

BACK WHERE WE STARTED. For some, today's Senate hearings recall a 1975 Senate investigation into a National Security Agency spy program that intercepted American's phone calls and mail. As now, intelligence officials claimed that the program was "authorized by the President's constitutional powers" and "prevented terrorist attacks," and Republicans complained "that the government's most sensitive secrets were being splashed on the front pages of newspapers," The New York Times reports. "For those of us who went through it all back then, there's disappointment and even anger that we're back where we started from," former Vice President Walter F. Mondale told the Times. — Posted at 6:43 pm

EAVESDROPPING HEARINGS BEGIN TODAY. The Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings today, questioning Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on the National Security Agency's domestic spy program, hoping to learn the administration's legal defense of the program to evaluate the program's lawfulness. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told The New York Times Sunday that the program "is in flat violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act." But Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the nation's No. 2 intelligence official, defended the program Sunday on Fox Morning News, saying that current laws limited intelligence agencies' ability to detect terrorist threats, The Los Angeles Times reports. Gonzales is expected to testify that getting a warrant from the FISA court could result in delays that prohibit the government from apprehending a terrorist attack, and to leave open the possibility that President Bush will ask the FISA court for blanket approval for the program, according to documents released to TIME . — Posted at 6:40 pm

SPECTER ALLOWS FOR POSSIBILITY OF SUBPOENAING REPORTERS On "Meet the Press" yesterday, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said that "there may be justification" for subpoenaing reporters in areas of "really serious national security issues" in reply to host Tim Russert's question about calls to subpoena reporters regarding the leaks of the administration's secret eavesdropping program. — Posted at 1:14 pm

CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OF NEW YORK TIMES CONTINUES According to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, the Justice Department is continuing to investigate possible criminal charges in connection with leaks to The New York Times regarding the adiminstration's secret domestic spying program, according to Editor & Publisher. — Posted at 1:02 pm

CIA SOUGHT TO PROTECT PLAME\'S IDENTITY. Newly released sections of Judge David S. Tatel's concurring decision denying New York Times reporter Judith Miller's reporter's privilege claim - a decision which helped send Miller to prison - shows that the CIA "was making specific efforts to conceal" Valerie Plame's covert identity, according to Newsweek. Lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's former chief of staff who is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, had questioned whether Plame had covert status within the CIA. — Posted at 12:10 pm

Feb. 3, 2006

MOUSSAOUI JURY SEALED. A federal judge ordered yesterday that the names of jurors in the death-penalty sentencing hearing of Zacarias Moussaoui will not be released to the public because of "the intense media and public interest in this case," The Washington Post reports. The jury will be deciding whether Moussaoui will be executed. Last year, Moussaoui pleaded guilty for conspiring with al Qaeda in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. — Posted at 5:25 pm

SPECIALISTS QUESTION STATE OF THE UNION ASSERTIONS. Legal specialists doubted the accuracy of several statements President Bush made about his domestic surveillance program during his State of the Union speech, particularly that "previous presidents have used the same constitutional authority I have," The Boston Globe reported Thursday. Legal experts say that wiretaps ordered by previous presidents were implemented before warrants were required for national security investigations, the story explains. — Posted at 5:24 pm

PATRIOT ACT EXTENDED UNTIL MARCH. Congress agreed yesterday to extend the Patriot Act until March 10 to allow more time to negotiate changes with more civil liberties protections than the draft Act rejected in December, The Washington Post reported. Officials involved in negotiations told the Post that some agreements had been reached, but others needed more time. — Posted at 5:22 pm

SENATE DENIED ADMINISTRATION\'S SPYING DOCUMENTS. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has rejected requests by the Senate Judiciary Committee for classified legal opinions concerning the administration's domestic surveillance program, saying they would add little to the debate since the administration's legal defense has been explained publicly several times, The New York Times reported Wednesday. Democrats told the Times they want to review internal opinions to understand how legal thinking about the program evolved since the DOJ at one point had serious concerns about the program's legality, the story says. — Posted at 5:21 pm

SENATE DEMS RAIL BUSH AT SECURITY SESSION. At an annual national security meeting Thursday, Senate Democrats charged the Bush administration with preventing Congress's Intelligence Committees from carrying out their duties by withholding intelligence information from them and launching a publicity tour to defend the National Security Agency surveillance program, The New York Times reported. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kans.) responded later, accusing the Democrats of derailing the discussions: "I am concerned that some of my Democrat colleagues used this unique public forum to make clear that they believe the gravest threat we face is not Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, but rather the president of the United States." — Posted at 5:19 pm

WHITE HOUSE EMAIL MISSING Certain White House emails from 2003 were not properly archived, according to a letter from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, according to MSNBC. The letter stated, "We advise you that we have learned that not all e-mail of the Office of the Vice President and the Executive Office of the President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system." — Posted at 5:14 pm

LIBBY\'S TRIAL DATE SET The trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby will begin on Jan. 8, 2007, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton decided in a hearing today, according to The New York Times. Lawyers for Libby, who is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice, have said they plan to "obtain notes kept by other reporters -- besides the three identified in Libby's indictment -- so they can determine when journalists first heard about Plame and from whom." — Posted at 5:05 pm

EMBEDDING SUCCESS. A 2004 Pentagon-backed study of the embedding program in Iraq hails it as a success for both military officials and journalists, according to Editor & Publisher. The study included interviews with 136 military personnel and 104 editors, bureau chiefs with leading newspapers and embedded reporters between May 2003 and April 2004. — Posted at 2:48 pm

EFFORTS TO FREE JILL CARROLL CONTINUE. Worldwide support is growing for freeing kidnapped journalist Jill Carroll, who was abducted Jan. 7 in Iraq where she was freelancing for The Christian Science Monitor. A poster of Carroll will be hung from Rome's city hall beginning Sunday, the Monitor reported. — Posted at 2:29 pm

BLAME THE MEDIA. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a Pentagon briefing that fear of criticism from the media constrains the Pentagon from doing a better job in the information war against enemies like al Qaeda, Reuters reported. Earlier in the week, President George W. Bush told CBS News that public support for the war began to erode because people were jaded by images of death on the media. — Posted at 2:18 pm

INTEL OFFICIALS: SUBPOENA JOURNALISTS TO PROTECT NATIONAL SECURITY. Government intelligence officials told a Senate Committee Thursday that they will push for investigations into leaks of classified information and, if necessary to protect national security, seek to subpoena journalists, The Associated Press reported. — Posted at 2:07 pm

Feb. 1, 2006

HOUSE TO VOTE ON PATRIOT ACT EXTENSION. The House is scheduled to vote today to extend the Patriot Act into March rather than let it expire Friday, providing Congress more time to hammer out a deal that strengthens civil liberties without hurting efforts to fight terrorism, reported The Los Angeles Times. In December, Congress extended the law until Feb. 3 after a bipartisan filibuster blocked a final vote on the Act's renewal. — Posted at 4:58 pm

MA BELL LET FEDS REACH OUT & TOUCH US? The Electronic Frontier Foundation brought a class-action suit against AT&T in federal court in N.Y. yesterday, accusing the company of breaking the law by cooperating with the National Security Agency in its warrantless surveillance program, The New York Times reported. The government may seek to withhold evidence in the case based on national security concerns, which may impede EFF's ability to prosecute the case, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported. EFF would not tell the Times how it knows Ma Bell helped the agency. EFF's complaint can be found here. — Posted at 4:56 pm

GONZALES HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO, FEINGOLD SAYS. In a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) told the Attorney General to be prepared to explain his "misleading testimony" during his confirmation hearings when he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee Feb. 6. It "appears that the Attorney General was not being straight with the Judiciary Committee and he has some explaining to do," Feingold said in a statement released the same day. When asked during the confirmation hearings whether the President had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of the criminal law, Gonzales first dismissed the question as "hypothetical," then testified that "it's not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes." — Posted at 12:19 pm

LIBBY\'S DEFENSE EMERGES. Lawyers for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, suggested their defense strategy in papers filed yesterday, according to The New York Times. Libby, who was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald after Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, plans to argue that if his "statements to Fitzgerald were untrue, it was a case of innocent confusion or faulty memory," according to the Times. In addition, Libby's lawyers have also asked the court for CIA records which would indicate whether or not Plame's employment was classified, according to the Washington Post. In addition, they want information from the CIA about whether the leak of Plame's identity "damaged national security of agency operations." — Posted at 11:58 am